The Stand-In Empress’S Wedding Night [EN]: Chapter 183

183. Shall We Go Out Together?

Oct 05, 2022

‘What is this woman? Could she be some kind of witch who charms people?’

Linelle couldn’t take his eyes off the woman sitting next to him, shamelessly gulping down his liquor.

At first, he thought his gaze was drawn to her simply because of her absurd behavior.

But soon, he was captivated by a strange feeling he couldn’t quite put into words.

The problem was, even if he couldn’t explain it with words, his body was making it clear, which was even more baffling.

‘Why is this happening?’

Linelle subtly lowered his head to look at his lower body.

That area had been as good as dead.

For the past month, ever since the incident at the monastery, it had been consistently subdued.

Who is this woman?

What is it about this woman who brazenly drinks his liquor that makes his dormant function come alive!

He felt a sense of dismay that went beyond mere embarrassment.

He could already tell from her way of speaking that she was an unusually eccentric woman.

Linelle glanced back and forth between his lower body and her profile, seriously wondering which one was the problem.

The woman was lost in some strange delusion, spouting nonsense, while the part of him that had been subdued for a month was inexplicably regaining its vigor.

Linelle, trying to hide his predicament, pulled his robe further forward and tugged his hood lower.

‘If I didn’t have this robe, I would be in big trouble, both above and below.’

No matter how much he thought about it, he couldn’t figure out the cause.

Only Linelle’s ego was suffering.

‘Damn it, what am I doing…’

A sense of unspeakable shame tormented him.

He had only come in for one drink before returning to the Imperial Palace.

But when he came to his senses, he found himself ordering an entire bottle of liquor.

He couldn’t leave until the woman left.

His body, which had been as cold as ice, was warming up.

It wasn’t the alcohol. His body wouldn’t warm up just from drinking.

‘Then the cause must be this woman…’

He fidgeted with his robe, sighed softly, and then frowned as he met her eyes.

He couldn’t help but frown even more because he kept finding himself smiling whenever she smiled.

As they exchanged trivial words, the woman suddenly declared that she was married.

Linelle looked at her with a ‘so what?’ expression, but his body was losing its mind, constantly leaning towards the ‘married woman.’

He felt extremely displeased.

What did he care if she was married or not?

It wasn’t like he had any ulterior motives towards her, as she seemed to think, when he grabbed her hand.

He had only tried to stop her from drinking Raphael’s liquor.

Of course, he should have stopped her with words, but his hand had moved on its own.

Linelle knew that the fact that the woman was married made him feel even more conflicted.

So, he blurted out whether she was married or not.

“Then there shouldn’t be any misunderstandings.”

He had been married, but because the person he married had completely vanished from his mind, he spoke in the past tense, which caused a problem.

The woman asked him if he was divorced, and he ended up mentioning that the marriage had been annulled.

Then, without any hesitation or caution, the woman asked Linelle:

“But when did your wife leave home?”

The woman’s eyes sparkled with curiosity, which was very annoying, but

“A month ago…”

The fact that he answered her question so honestly was even more absurd.

It was really strange.

Half of what the woman said was ridiculous, but when she asked a question, Linelle almost inevitably had to answer.

Because of that, the day he was trying so hard not to remember began to resurface.

***

A month ago, the monastery.

The bodies of dead Galacos [powerful, monstrous creatures] were piled up just 50 meters from the entrance of the monastery.

The allied forces of the Tanya Island pirates and the Aclato Principality did not directly attack the honored guests. Instead, they displayed the bodies of the Galacos they had killed on the way from the Elange Forest to the monastery as if they were exhibits.

The allied forces’ intentions were very successful.

The honored guests, who already knew the power of the Galacos, were all shocked by the sight.

In addition, the allied forces had captured about ten Galacos and locked them in three iron cages.

The meaning of the iron cages in which the Galacos were imprisoned was clear. It was a tacit threat that anyone could be thrown in there.

The Tanya Island pirates had captured a large number of relatively small animals from Aclato Island.

Just before arriving on the continent, they fed the small animals poisoned bait and killed them.

The poisoned animals were then used as bait to lure the Galacos in the Elange Forest.

Throughout the march to the monastery, they occasionally cut the bodies of the dead animals and threw them into the sky.

Then, the Galacos lurking in the forest would smell the blood and jump into the sky to snatch the bait.

The Galacos who ate the poisoned animals also became poisoned.

The Galacos, who did not die immediately but lost their strength and fell to the ground, were mostly killed by the allied forces, and some were put in iron cages and detoxified.

The detoxified Galacos had separate food.

First, they would negotiate through dialogue. But if they were arrogant or uncooperative, they would be mercilessly put in the iron cage with the other Galacos and punished.

That was what Hetor had in mind even before crossing the continent.

At that moment, as tension flowed between the allied forces, who were 50 meters away from the honored guests at the entrance of the monastery, one of the honored guests, who had always complained and talked a lot during the Continental Hunting Competition, fearlessly stepped forward and shouted at the allied forces.

“How dare those who have been living on the island interfere in the hunting competition attended by the imperial family and nobles of the continent and make a mess!”

He was one of the elderly ministers of the North Continent’s Ekiya Empire.

The elderly minister, who had no idea what was going on, pointed his finger at Hetor, who seemed to be the leader of the allied forces.

The eyes of the Tanya Island pirates were all on Hetor.

Hetor calmly said to the minister without changing his expression.

“It’s harsh to say that before we even make a mess.”

The minister of the Ekiya Empire was relieved to hear a rather gentle voice coming from Hetor’s large and wild appearance, and he walked forward and raised his voice once more.

“Pay your respects to the emperors of the continent first! You ignorant pirates!”

What Hetor despised the most was the arrogance of the continentals.

Among the nobles who had lived their entire lives without paying attention to others, there were occasionally those who did not feel a sense of crisis and volunteered to die.

This was one of those cases.

“I’ll show you what happens if you’re educated but have no power. Palto!”

Hetor said something meaningful to the Ekiya minister and then called his subordinate.

“Escort that noble gentleman to the island in accordance with the island’s etiquette.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

Palto, as ordered by his lord, had his men grab the minister’s arms and mercilessly throw him into the iron cage where the Galacos were imprisoned.

The excited cries of the hungry Galacos and the minister’s screams mingled and echoed around the monastery building.

The other honored guests were stunned and shocked by the terrible sight that unfolded before their eyes.

No one helped the minister.

It happened so quickly that there was no time to stop it, and even if they could have stopped it, it was not an atmosphere in which they could easily step forward.

“I will listen to the purpose of your visit to the continent inside the monastery.”

In a situation where no one dared to come forward, Linelle stepped forward and spoke to Hetor.

“Let’s do that.”

Hetor nodded to the Emperor of the Lapion Empire and got off his horse.

And that evening, Princess Roxana arrived at the monastery much earlier than Linelle had expected.

***

“Hey, are you listening to me?”

Linelle snapped out of his reverie when the woman nudged his arm.

“Huh?”

“I asked if I could have a drink.”

The woman was already holding the liquor bottle and filling her glass to the brim.

“What kind of situation is it to ask after you’ve already poured it?”

“It’s a case where manners have died.”

The woman shrugged and answered shamelessly.

“But I asked several times, and you didn’t answer.”

“Do you think it’s okay to touch other people’s things if there’s no answer?”

When Linelle questioned her in a rather stern tone, the woman responded lightly again.

“Yeah, I think it’s okay as long as I don’t get caught.”

“!”

The woman glanced at Linelle’s dumbfounded expression and grinned as if she had been aiming for that expression.

“It’s okay with things, but you shouldn’t covet other people’s people…”

The woman muttered to herself and then gulped down the liquor.

As soon as she put down the empty glass, she picked up the liquor bottle again and filled it.

This time, without asking the owner of the liquor bottle.

Linelle was about to say something, but he changed his mind when he saw her serious expression.

When he closed his mouth, the woman opened hers.

“Hey, can I ask you something?”

“I refuse questions.”

“Really? Then just listen.”

When Linelle raised a hand to refuse, the woman lightly ignored his words and continued to say what she wanted to say.

“I’m asking because you’re divorced, but what do you think about remarriage?”

He didn’t answer the woman’s question.

She didn’t seem to be asking for an answer, so she immediately moved on to another question.

“Then, what do you think about remarriage after taking someone else’s person?”

The woman changed the question slightly, but it was still about remarriage.

Linelle thought about his own case.

He really had no thoughts or feelings about the remarriage he was about to have.

“My husband is remarrying.”

The woman, who had said a little while ago that she was married, suddenly confessed.

He stared at the woman’s face.

“Then you’re divorced… right?”

Linelle tilted his head at the woman’s ambiguous answer, but he didn’t bother to ask.

Instead, one corner of his mouth was rising.

The woman spat out words again.

“I think he’s having an affair.”

“What do you mean… ‘I think’?”

“I didn’t hear it directly. But if I put together the stories I’ve heard, it seems like some woman seduced my husband and made him abandon me.”

At the end of the story, her lips pouted.

“Your husband is trash, too.”

Linelle said firmly.

“The wife who deceived you and disappeared is just as bad.”

The woman patted him on the shoulder as if to comfort him.

He flinched his shoulder.

Apart from the fact that his body had been warming up since earlier, the speed of the blood flowing through his lower body increased dramatically just from the woman’s touch.

“Crazy…”

The woman picked up Linelle’s words, which he muttered to himself.

“Yeah. My husband is crazy, and your wife is crazy… well, whatever.”

“Are you going to take revenge on your husband for remarrying another woman?”

Linelle asked, looking at the woman’s fierce eyes.

“I’m thinking about secretly cutting off his neck or cutting off his lower body.”

She revealed her terrifying plan without any hesitation.

“!”

“Anyway, I want to cut off one of them, but I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

Because I don’t have any memories of my husband, so I’m not angry even if I hear the news of his remarriage.

I just feel a little uneasy.

The woman joked to him as if it were true and then continued to speak inwardly.

“I hope you succeed.”

He sincerely cheered for the woman.

“Thank you, I hope you find that lying wife and get rid of her.”

The woman smiled brightly and patted his shoulder again.

Linelle looked down at the woman’s hand on his shoulder.

He felt like the warmth that started from his shoulder was spreading throughout his body.

It was a feeling he had never felt even when he abused body temperature-raising potions.

What was even stranger was his body.

The evaluation Linelle made of this woman and the evaluation his body made were completely different.

He tried to resist and ignore it, but in the end, reason lost to instinct.

He mustered up the courage to open his mouth.

“If you’re not busy, that is… if you don’t have a husband waiting for you, no, I mean…”

Unorganized words came out.

He was surprised that he himself was saying such things to a strange woman even though he was aware of his current situation.

The real trash was not her husband but himself.

But for some reason, he didn’t regret it.

He briefly glanced at the face of Princess Roxana, his remarriage partner, but it was not connected to feelings of guilt.

He was just nervous about what kind of answer the woman in front of him would give.

The woman rolled her pink eyes quite a few times and then opened her mouth.

“Are you saying let’s go out together?”

“Don’t you want to?”

Linelle asked.

The woman snorted and got up from her seat and walked towards the tavern door.

…I guess she doesn’t want to.

I see, I got rejected.

He thought to himself, ‘Wouldn’t I have been rejected if I had said I was the emperor?’ and then let out a hollow laugh.

Yeah. It was an absurd proposal in the first place.

But because he was an emperor who had never been rejected in this way, he didn’t know how embarrassing and empty it felt to be rejected.

Why did he make such a proposal?

Did he feel a sense of kinship with the fact that they both had been hurt by the person they were married to?

‘No, no.’

He shook his head.

Although he was rejected, he decided to be honest.

It was true that the proposal to go out together was easier because her husband was ruining their marriage and remarrying another woman.

But even if that wasn’t the reason, he had wanted to be with her all along.

“What are you doing? Aren’t you coming out?”

He was blankly looking at the woman’s back, but she opened the tavern door, turned around, and shouted in a slightly annoyed tone.

‘Me?’

Linelle couldn’t ask in words and pointed at himself with his finger and widened his eyes.

Then the woman smiled and nodded, gesturing that she would be waiting outside.

Linelle hesitated, then quickly paid for the liquor and got up from his chair.

Just as he was turning around, the tavern owner hurriedly called him.

“Sir, you have to pay for the person next to you, too!”

“…What?”

“Aren’t you with them? That customer just left without paying.”

“!”